F1 HISTORY By Graham Duxbury @ TheRealDux
BERNIE AT 96: The man who turned F1 into a global business
Graham Duxbury is a former professional racing driver, celebrated SA champion and acclaimed motorsport administrator and commentator. A South African Hall of Fame Inductee, he made history in 1984 by winning the famous Daytona 24-hour sports car race in the USA in an all-South African team. Today, he heads Duxbury Networking, a leading IT company.
Bernard Charles Ecclestone – Bernie to generations of Formula One fans – turns 96 in October 2026. And while the man who once ruled F1 from his office, private jet and telephone has long since surrendered the keys to the kingdom, he remains one of the most consequential figures in the history of the sport.
Ecclestone no longer runs F1. That chapter ended in 2017, when Liberty Media completed its acquisition of F1 ' s commercial rights. Ecclestone became chairman emeritus, but his direct involvement in running the sport was over.
Yet it is impossible to understand modern F1 without understanding Bernie Ecclestone. He did not invent Grand Prix racing. He did something more important. He recognised that F1 could become a global commercial venture rather than simply a collection of races staged by individual promoters. This transformation is his enduring legacy.
Born in Suffolk, Ecclestone left school at 16 and went to work at the local gasworks while pursuing his interest in motorcycles. He began buying and selling motorcycle parts and eventually formed a dealership.
The young Bernie quickly discovered that he had a greater talent for business than for his passion- motor racing.
He competed in Formula 3 in the late 1940s and early 1950s and in 1958, entered two World Championship Grands Prix with Connaught but failed to qualify for either. However, Ecclestone ' s involvement with F1 continued through driver management. He worked with Stuart Lewis-Evans and later with Jochen Rindt.
Ecclestone eventually gravitated to team ownership, buying the Brabham F1 team in 1972. It was here that his combination of commercial instinct and willingness to challenge convention began to reshape F1. With the talented South African designer Gordon Murray, Brabham became a major force, winning World Championships with Nelson Piquet in 1981 and 1983. But running a successful GP team was not enough.
Ecclestone recognised that the real money – and therefore the real power – lay in controlling the commercial side of the sport. He realised that controlling the television rights would change everything.
He negotiated increasingly sophisticated agreements and helped create the commercial structures that eventually became the modern Formula One Group.
As a result, F1 expanded beyond its traditional European base into markets including Malaysia, the United States and the Middle East. Ecclestone was equally comfortable negotiating with presidents, prime ministers, royal families, corporate executives and race promoters.
His style was frequently described as dictatorial. His philosophy was essentially that someone had to make the decisions.
That approach produced enormous commercial growth but also controversy. His political comments and relationships with powerful figures regularly generated headlines and remain part of the Ecclestone mythology.
Ecclestone’ s legacy is therefore complicated, particularly as he ran into conflict with the law.
In 2023, Ecclestone pleaded guilty in a London court to fraud by false representation after admitting that he had misled Britain ' s tax authorities about overseas assets. He received a suspended 17-month prison sentence and agreed to a £ 652.6 million settlement with HM Revenue & Customs.
In 2025 he sold his remarkable collection of 69 historic F1 cars, including machines associated with drivers such as Alberto Ascari, Mike Hawthorn, Niki Lauda, Nelson
Piquet and Michael Schumacher. The collection also included Murray’ s extraordinary Brabham BT46B fan car. It was an appropriately symbolic transaction. The man who spent decades accumulating pieces of F1 history was handing them to a new generation.
Even in retirement, Bernie remains connected to F1. He continues to follow the sport closely and occasionally offers his typically forthright opinions. In 2026 he is still commenting on the future of Max Verstappen and the economics of competing at the highest level. This is vintage Bernie.
At 96, he remains fascinated by the competitive and commercial mechanics of F1. And whether he is still involved or simply watching from the sidelines, his influence is unmistakable. Liberty Media has taken F1 into a new era of streaming, social media, Netflix, younger audiences, new manufacturers and increasingly sophisticated global marketing. But beneath that modern structure sits the commercial architecture Bernie built.
He may no longer control the paddock, the television rights or the calendar. But whenever F1 rolls into another country, signs another global broadcast deal or turns a GP weekend into a worldwide entertainment spectacle, there is still a little bit of Bernie Ecclestone in it. Photocredit: ar. inspiredpencil. com
OCTOBER 2026 39 WORDS IN ACTION